


Musicbox

by V_mum



Series: The Reader Insert Series [4]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Female Reader, Human/Monster Society, Multi, Other, Reader Is Not Frisk, Reader-Insert, Souls, Undertale Monsters on the Surface, a lot of soul theory, above ground, human reader
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:16:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9083932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_mum/pseuds/V_mum
Summary: Listening to the sounds of a person’s song is almost more personal than listening to their heartbeat. You think you like the sound you hear today. who is that?





	1. Prologue

Long ago, two races ruled over Earth: HUMANS and MONSTERS. One day, war broke out between the two races, and after a long battle, the humans were victorious. With their greatest magicians, they sealed the monsters underground with a magic spell, the creation of the BARRIER, one of the strongest magics to ever exist. A one-way entrance in, and a powerful exit door only accessible by both a human and monster soul in a single being.

6 HUMAN MAGES applied this barrier, known for their brilliant, magical souls. BRAVERY, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, PERSEVERANCE, INTEGRITY, JUSTICE. To destroy this barrier, each soul’s energy must be matched, and a seventh soul must be present to overpower the final magic.

SEVEN HUMAN SOULS of brilliant colors would be needed to destroy the barrier. The seventh soul must be strong. The seventh soul must be unrelenting. DETERMINATION, one of the most powerful types of human souls, a brilliant red soul, was the perfect human soul to do this. With the power of the seventh DETERMINED soul, still alive and still strong, the barrier can fall.

Of course, the seventh soul can be supplemented. The presence of the seventh soul is not, truly, necessary. Only the first six souls are needed, to match the power of the barrier, six human souls. All that would be needed, then, was a strong source of unrelenting power. A seventh determined soul is an example. A million monster souls, all beating as one, with the desire and dream of destroying and progressing past the barrier, is a nother example.

Other human souls were never needed. Only 6 children had to die to break the final barrier, and then the monsters could free themselves.

She moved through the underground, silent and peaceful, and never said a word. She told him when she finally reached the king.

The day ASGORE asked in front of the barrier, his other collected souls surrounding him, she told him.

The barrier told her, she said. It sang to her. It called in a voice so musical to her. It told her in a song.

She told him at the barrier, that her soul was not the one he needed.

her soul could never break the barrier. she could never free the monsters from the prison under Mt. Ebott, dead, or alive, human, or soul.

Black souls are not powerful, unrelenting, pushing. Black souls are dormant, they are balanced, neutral. They do not radiate bravery, they do not seek justice, they do not persevere. They are not kindness, patience, or integrity. They are not DETERMINATION.

Black souls listen. Black souls are open minded. Black souls swayable. Black souls are intuitive. Black souls are thoughtful. Black souls are creative and songful.

Black Souls are HARMONIC.

 

 

 

 

 

When he killed her, and tried to use her soul to crush the barrier, Asgore realized she had been right.

Under the power of the barrier, her rhythmic soul withered and was crushed itself.

Memory of the seventh human soul vanished with the hope it would break the barrier and was left from the monster history books and stories, and the confused monsters lost hope. Many monsters fell, later to be taken in by the Royal Scientist Alphys, and become the amalgamations.

The eighth human soul fell.

Asgore himself saw its DETERMINATION and its red sheen. As she had told him, a souls as strong as determination would break the barrier- but, as the late seventh human would tell him, it was some other power that would break the trap door that locked them in, as Frisk was alive in the end.

Few monsters would remember that there had been an extra human, that there had been eight to fall since the start of the war until its completion at Frisk’s savior. Only those who had met the HARMONIC soul themselves would remember her.

Asgore would regret her death for a very long time to come, but in his heart he knows he would have done it again.

She, after all, had been a natural HUMAN MAGE.


	2. Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theme Songs

Listening to the sounds of a person’s song is almost more personal than listening to their heartbeat.

For as long as you’ve been alive, its been like this.

No, no, not like that.

Okay, when you were little, it was a little different. Being in your own room alone, sometimes, you would hear nothing at all. Sometimes you’d scare yourself silly, the silence would be unnerving, you would hate it. if you made yourself sit in the silence too long, the thrumming would start. Like you could hear your own pulse in your throat, the blood coursing through your ears, the beat of your heart- but it was none of those things. If you felt around for your pulse or for your heart beat, you’d see that you could hear and feel that too. But while they were in time, in the same rhythm, matched beat for beat, the sounds were not the same.

You’d torn your room apart trying to find it on many occasions, and you’d hear it despite the noise you made in the process. Not over it, like it was louder, and not under it, like the noise you made as you searched was louder. But, through it. Around it. It filled whatever space of sound that wasn’t filled, and if sound were ever filled, you’d probably still hear it, somehow.

You always ran to your parents when it got too quiet, and that sound echoed in your head. even when your parents slept, they made noise that broke the sound of the silence, and they made sound that kept away the strange noise you couldn’t escape alone.

You never questioned why your parents made it go away. There wasn’t a rhyme or reason to it in a way. One doesn’t wonder why breaking the surface of water to breathe air makes you feel like you aren’t drowning anymore. It’s just a fact that you except. There’s a reason, but you just know it’s true, so you don’t question it.

That’s how it was when you were little. Like knowing blue is blue, or red is red, or the sun is bright and will go down at night. Those are all learned things, but you don’t really learn them. It just… becomes a part of your knowledge.

You didn’t ‘learn’ that your parents made certain sounds that kept away the silence. You just… one day you knew. Like knowing Santa isn’t real. One day you kind of realize, because your brain developed better logic, that you don’t believe anymore. Or, in this case, realized that there’s music.

Your parents made sounds, no matter what. They weren’t loud, they weren’t quiet, you weren’t sure they were actually there, but you knew they were. It was music. Like a speaker in their chests, constantly playing beats. Heart beats were different. It’s like a theme song in a movie. Or, that’s how you explained it to people- or, would.

You don’t explain that to people. Not anymore.

When you were little, you thought everyone hears it. it was just something that was real. You don’t question why colors have names. you don’t question why fire hurts to touch. You don’t question why people breathe. You don’t question why they can talk. You don’t question why they make music.

It was earth shattering to realize your parents didn’t hear the things you did. You were about 8 or so when you realized that. You’d always assumed they could. It hadn’t been strange to you they never made comments about it. And when you did, they must have always thought you meant something else. The sound of their breathing… the sound of heart beats… or something.

“You sound happy today, mama.”

“Oh, yes I do! Daddy told me something wonderful this morning!”

or

“Ouch- that was loud… why are you guys so loud today?”

“Sorry hun, were we raising our voices? We were just having an argument. Don’t worry, sweetheart.”

And then one day,

“You know, mom, you and dad have really different music.”

“Oh? I thought we both liked the same kind. Of course, your dads interest in rap is almost appalling…”

“Oh- no, I meant---”

But no matter how you phrased it, your mother never understood you. it took you a while to realize she had no idea what you were talking about. You’d tried to ask her, ‘cant you hear it?’ but she looked at you like you were crazy, and by the end, she’d. Just dismissed you.

But EVERYONE had a sound! You couldn’t understand, why didn’t anyone hear it?

Your mother was like jazz. Your father more retro. Your math teacher sounded like shaking maracas and your middle school friend sounded like bad punk pop.

No one could hear it.

You’d always loved music, you’d loved sound itself, and many people sounded beautiful. You can’t imagine people had never heard these sounds, these beautiful sounds and musics that came from different people.

You tried to figure out how to recreate these sounds. You tried to make them, and as you grew through your teen years, you spent what money you got on audio tech, trying your damndest, learning new instruments.

The longer you tried, to more you realized there was something wrong with the sounds you heard. They weren’t sound, the longer you thought, the harder you tried to make them with sound. It was something else.

It was different in the way that smell and taste were not the same. They needed each other; without smell, your taste is impacted, dull, less expansive. It’s duller, bland. They’re linked.

If you cover your ears, the… not-sound musics and noises are still there, but… they don’t sound like something, they just, are something. Like smelling something and being able to taste it, but then plugging your nose, and what’s left on your tongue is… it’s not there but it kind of is, you can kind of taste it, it’s there…

And then, your parents died.

Christmas eve, their car flipped after colliding with another car, and spun off the bridge over the Clear River, your father picking up your mother from the airport on her way home from a business trip in time for the holiday. You were home, fast asleep. You’d been trying to stay up, excited to see her after two months. Christmas day, you woke up, and ran to your parents room- no one was there.

You waited all day, all day of Christmas, a 15 year old kid sitting next to their tree full of presents, waiting for their mother and father, wondering if the plane had been delayed. Grinning at the cookies and milk your father ‘left for Santa’, wondering how your dad was going to try and explain why Santa hadn’t come and had them and why the gifts from Santa were still wrapped and hidden under the bed in their room, if this would be the year they finally told you he wasn’t real.

You waited till sunset, and no one came.

By the time the sun was under the horizon, you’d hustled fearfully out of the house, half panicked by the silence and sitting alone in it for so long, and fueled by that fear and paranoia, you’d run to the police station two blocks away.

It didn’t take them very long to come to the realization that you were the child of one of the cars in the crash. Merry Christmas.

At the funeral, with two water logged bodies in closed caskets, their bodies were silent. That was the day you found out the dead people don’t make noises. And it was the day you learned you’d heard the sound of their lives for the last time and hadn’t even known it.

You couldn’t hear those sounds threw phones or skype calls. It had been ages since you’d heard the sound she makes. As you were placed in foster care with no known relatives but a drunk aunt with abuse charges and a distant uncle in prison, you came to the horrifying understanding that you could barely remember the sound of your mother.

They would both fade with time.

Your foster home was nice. They were kind people with two other fosters and 3 kids of their own. You got to keep all your old things. You sold most of them online so you’d fit into their home, and saved the money for yourself for later. You kept what things you wanted to keep in boxes- your room in your fosters home only had a single bed, and your collection of sound equipment, including the new mixer program you’d unwrapped in sobs in the police station after being told, trying to retain something of the life you were losing.

All of high school, the minute you came back from school, you poured your life into trying to create music. You tried, crying over your equipment, to preserve what you could. You tried to make the sound of your parents.

The sound of your mother working in her books. Your father’s sound mingling with that of his whistle as he grilled. The sound of them when they kissed and their music blended and intertwined in the sound of what you could only call love.

All you could do was cry, even when your fosters were dazzled with how beautiful each track sounded, when your oldest sibling told you that you should consider a career as a musician.

It would never sound right. The music was always two dimensional, it didn’t have their lives. It was flat. It was weak. It was only one sense. It was only the smell, without the taste.

It wasn’t them.

It never would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aha finally our MC is here


	3. History

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fallen Down + Once Upon A Time  
>  Toriel + Frisk

The year is 201X when the monsters are freed.

You’re in your senior year of high school, and, coincidentally, your little high school is monster Ground-Zero.

Palimount high school is one of the oldest buildings in the city, near the base of Mt. Ebott. A long stretch of tall metal fencing separates the compound from the forests that start up the mountain slopes, and the sister-school, Big Heart elementary, shares the same courtyard front.

High Schoolers of all ages have walked with their youngest siblings to school, and before splitting ways to go to their separate building complexes, would stand at the fence, staring into the trees with their siblings. Older siblings would pass Ebott City’s most famed rumor down to their siblings like passing a torch, that the big metal fence was to keep humans safe, for kids who went up the mountain were never to return, mysteriously taken away to the ‘Next World’.

You’d lived in Ebott all your life, you’d always known the rumor. You’d even passed that torch, once or twice, to the newest of the rooming Foster kids who’d come from outside of town. It was just a part of Ebott culture.

But it was your high school that was the place the first monsters arrived.

You’d never forget the day the school went on lock down mode because of an intruder wandering in the campus, nor would you ever forget hearing it was a skeleton, as your teachers did as they would in any drill, trying to herd your classes out of the cafeteria from lunch to a safe building.

You weren’t the first person to meet a monster, you had to doubt that. There was no way- someone had had to of seen them to start the Lock Down procedures. But you’d ended up separated from your herding group and just standing, confused, in the cafeteria, trying to remember where you were supposed to go, when you saw your first monster.

A tall, towering figure you’d only seen the likes of in bad or strange dreams, movies, or childrens books, cloaked in purple, horns atop a furry head. Her hand over her mouth as she wandered, wide brown, purple-flecked eyes awed as they looked around, walking through one of the doors that had been left open in a scramble.

Her eyes fell on you, and she perked up excitedly, at least you think it was a she.

But it doesn’t matter. The second she looked at you, you knew more about her than you should. Than anyone could from a first look.

The tempo of her music was beautiful. It was like something from a Zelda game’s fairy garden, magical and amazing. It was loving, and motherly, maternal, it was elegant and it was steady in tune, even when it subtly moved faster with her change of emotion from amazed to excited. It was straight out of a heartwarming moment in a comfy home, or from a magical little world that’s safe and fun and beautiful.

She was heading right for you, but you felt no fear. You knew she was soft. She was magical.

She reached you, easily, with her long, swift strides.

“Hello, my child. Please, do not run, do not be afraid. I am Toriel. I am a Monster, from Mt. Ebott.”

You’d honestly been unable to speak, at first.

You’d never known a song so pure, so sweet. So kind. So warm.

You’ve never heard a song like this.

Humans don’t sound like this. Humans are incomplete tracks, compared to a monster. Their songs are only partial, and they pair with one another well to make full songs. But all alone, a monster is a symphony. A song with such grace it was amazing. And, they were even less… audio, then a human. They were even more of that sixth sense, that not-audio.

And she was beautiful. Like music to your ears. You’d want to listen to this forever.

You’d managed to croak out a quiet, “hello,” unwilling to try and speak over the song she played from deep within her, even well knowing you couldn’t.

Her expression was delighted. You were, perhaps, the first human to respond to her, to not run in fear.

“TORI! PLEASE DON’T WANDER OFF! WHERE HAVE YOU GONE?”

That voice was much deeper. You couldn’t see that person. Toriel made a soft scowl and the tune of her sound track skipped and played faster as she called back, “hush, Asgore! Please, all of you,” her tone of voice and sound softened beautifully again, “remain out there, I have found a human, let us not scare them.”

“Wait, kiddo-” yet another voice started, but a tiny human raced through the door and hurried to Toriel’s side.

Toriel took their hand, and your eyes shifted down to the other person.

Amazing. A human’s song as strong as the monster’s, so full of sound.

Like soft Piano keys. A sunset somewhere, if one made music. It’s repetitive, until the keys shift into a lovely cascading song that fills you with a warmth. It’s gentle but simple like a child. It’s calming and soft, it spells a lack of violence or hate. It carrier a surprising amount of emotion, sadness and love, for this child’s less-than-expressive face.

When their hands touch, the songs mingle in a magical way and become something entirely new. It reminds you of your mother. It makes your eyes tear up, for years after hearing it. it’s a wonder you didn’t cry the first time you heard it.

“Human child, this is my own child, Frisk. Would you be able to take us somewhere, to meet… a leader? Someone important? A king perhaps? Or a Queen?”

There’s a hiccup in Frisk’s track that you recognize as amusement, and you are also somewhat amused.

You… don’t know what else to, so you end up telling her, “I- I only know how t-to find- my principal?”

Toriel smiles patiently. “That will do, my dear. If you tell me how to find them, I and my friends will happily go.”

You use the old schedule with your classes you had gotten at the beginning of the year. It has a map of the school on it. With your pencil, you help the old woman. You show her where she’s going and how to get there, and warn her it should be locked because they’re in a lock down procedure.

She smiles, thanks you, and heads back out to her friends. Frisk waves at you with the smallest little smile as they leave. You hear excited voices, and someone loudly saying, “I CANNOT WAIT TO MEET THIS PRINCE, PAL!”

And someone else, “Sounds like a great pal to me, bro.”

And then an annoyed screech…

And then the sounds of the voices are fading.

You don’t know how they get where they’re going. But your teacher comes running in and gasps in relief to have found you, and you’re dragged back to the place that you should be, safe inside the lock down until the police come.

You’re stuck at the school two hours longer than normal. But when you get home, the news is out.

A King and Queen of monsters, with the human child from before recognized as the Ambassador, two skeletons, a fish, and a dinosaur.

History is made, that day.

Monsters have arrived on the Surface. 


	4. Ruins

Your heart stuttered almost every time you met new monsters.

Ebott city was steadily flooded with them in the final year of high school, and further on as you stood in the world as an adult.

Your foster parents were sweet, but they had you in a slot. When you turned 19, you had to move out even after you didn’t get into the college you’d been aiming for- an art school with a high music program. For all your music, you didn’t fare well in most of your classes. Your teachers hated when you had your ear buds in, but, you honestly relied on them to try and drown out other people- many humans had nasty songs. You probably wouldn’t have been able to afford that school you wanted, anyway…

So you lived in your home city, small apartment and a job working a few streets from your apartment. Your mother, bio-mother, was a high-ranker in a large property firm. She left you many things, as did your father, few of which you’d touched. One of those things she’d left you was an old store-front property off an alley.

Whatever business ran there always failed, so you mother had just gotten it from the company herself since the property was unprofitable. It’d been her office and like her own work HQ, private property. She’d left it to you, and after a little rezoning, and having someone from your mother’s old company come to clean out all her business and sorts for the company as well as take back any company owned stuff, promptly cramming anything left into the smallest little off-room…

You’d turned it into a little… studio/book store.

Most of the business was done online; the place was normally empty save for the few strangers who wandered in after noticing the sign out at the alley entrance. It was chalk, and you changed it up sometimes.

When it was empty, you could work on your equipment. Struggling with all your might to perfect those flat sounds into that of the ones you missed.

But aside from the online sales, which kept you afloat alongside a job at the high school as a part-time worker in their Media Center as an IT/Tech worker, the store wasn’t always empty.

The stray human patron found their way in; not quite every day, not even always every other day. Some kids you’d mentioned your store to from the high school, someone your siblings or friends had mentioned it to…

And, monsters.

You aren’t sure how the monsters always found your little store. Humans didn’t typicaly just show up, they were always referred, or came in because they weren’t very good at the online shopping bit but liked a book and found it on the website. But the monsters found their way here, on their own, attracted there.

After they’d leave, sometimes, you had to close shop immediately as their sounds filled your mind. You needed to make them- or, try to.

The first monster you’d ever had enter your shop almost given you a heart attack. A spectral specter had wandered in, and the sound that followed him was one of the most musical ones you’ve ever heard. It was even more beautiful than most monsters. Spooky, even, you dare say. Electronic-esc. It was always so hard to describe a monster’s sound, they’re music, they’re theme. It always fit just right for them.

The nervous monster had browsed for a while, before finally floating over and apologizing for not buying anything. He quietly explained that he’d come here because he could hear your music. You’d been working on some when he’d floated right through your doorway.

Napstablook was one of your favorite monsters you’d ever met. He liked to come by now and again, and he’d play with your sound equipment a lot. He’d always apologize, saying how he didn’t have anything but a program on his computer to make things with. He liked your stuff. You liked the music he played when he was around. It was, in a way, upbeat, unlike him. You could imagine ghosts in top hats dancing around to it.

You liked the music he showed you, too. You always tried to copy the music he made just by being alive. Every time you worked on it, it sounded a little bit closer, but by the end you would be in frustrated tears. You can’t make it sound right. You can add all the tempos, add all the beats, but it isn’t that… that sound you desire.

One day, Napstablook found the audio you were trying to make based on him. He was elated, he loved it. You had never seen him so, ‘excited’. A word you can’t use easily to describe Blook, but.

He told you that this song makes his soul happy.

You don’t know anything about souls, but you can’t help but fluster and smile. It sounds like a compliment.

From then on, Blook kind of makes you his music partner. He runs new track by you for commentary. He says you give music a better life, when you make a suggestion that he adds.

Blook is nice, like every monster. If more nervous.

Other monsters find their way here. Normally when you work on music, or when you’re playing it. You joke to yourself that monsters just know good music when they hear it.

Some of your friends like to joke you’re a monster magnet. Places you go, get popular with monsters. You hope it’s true, because the more monsters around you, the more beautiful they sound. Where monsters go, there’s always a nice sound in the air, even when they aren’t there. Their theme lingers where they spend time, giving every place a unique song and tune.

Like the day you apparently spoke to the once-queen of all monsters, that cafeteria carried traces of her music for months.

Your shop always sounds amazing to you. You get mostly Looxes, Whimsuns, and Froggits, and once, there was a Moldsmal in an isle all of the sudden, and a few hours later it was gone.

Every time you meet a monster, they sound so incredible, you lock yourself in the music studio room of the property and don’t emerge for hours. Only more end up coming, normally, after. You love it. Its like some bizarre dream.

One day, a Loox refers to another Whimsun while they’re there. They call your store the Ruins by accident. You like the name really well, better than what you’d been calling the place.

Many monsters who come are cheerful and amused when they see the chalk sign has been renaming the store. You got a sign above the door one day, too.

Welcome To The Ruins.

Had you known anything about the ruins in the underground, and who had lived there famously, you wouldn’t have been surprised the day you heard a slightly familiar song start up as one day, she came to see the store.


	5. Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Return, the queen in the ruins

She doesn’t recognize you.

You aren’t surprised. Humans look a lot more similar to one another than monsters do, and you’re sure she’s met many over the last 3 years, and you don’t look the same as back then anyway.

You know you’re staring, and she only smiles at you. She doesn’t even seem to mind. Her tempo and beat is steady and as motherly and loving as before. She seems a bit more tired, but you can guess it is probably because the famous adoption case is at its most critical right now, so says the closely watching media. You see it on the news all the time.

You’ve watched it curiously, hopefully. So much evidence had come to light over the years; initially the monsters had lost custody of the once-missing human child. For about a year the kid had had to live with their parents, real parents, before the child wound up vanishing AGAIN. This time instead of coming back having saved yet another race they were later found by police. Evidence of the abuse Frisk had been enduring was released to the media and the whole country was shocked.

The ambassador had it rough. So did the woman you, and many others, thought ought to have legal custody. But many OTHERS were against a monster with custody of a human child. Lady Toriel was also fighting a heavy battle to keep her monster school program’s human acceptance classes open; having humans in her monster school had struck massive upset and you weren’t sure how long until the court finally decided to shut her down, or set the accepting precedent of human-monster mingling. They were certainly dragging their heels in the process, and while they did, Protests went rampant by the courthouse and school on both PRO and ANTI mingling sides.

The queen truly was having it rough, and not having her child with her- as Frisk was currently in the system in an under-wraps foster home with humans- must make it all the harder.

Her voice startled you from thinking. The ex-queen was no longer where you’d been staring, and at your counter. She had placed a book about snails on the front counter.

She’s looking at you expectantly.

“o-oh, I'm sorry, what was that?”

The beat of her music shows no sign of annoyance. Just beauty and grace, and perhaps amusement. Without any sign of upset, she repeated herself. “Why do they call this place the ruins, dear?”

“Oh, heh. I'm not entirely sure. Maybe cause its old. I don’t know much ‘bout the undergrounds places, like the ruins.”

Toriel smiles, looking around. “I'm sure it must be the air. This place just feels similar, after spending my time here myself I cannot help but to agree. An old Froggit friend of mine recommended me here. I myself am from the ruins, as well.”

You smile. “It’s just a bunch of old books in here, honest.”

“Oh, it’s also very purple, do I say!” the queen smiled, scuffing her nice looking shoes over the purple shag rug, and looking around the light purple wall paint. She fits right in, in her purple, floral dress and knitted white penny coat. “The ruins was carved from purple stone and bricks as well. Do you favor the color?”

“nah, this was- my, uh, mothers studio. She loved purple, maybe too much.” You smile a little. She’d painted every room in the house purple. “Man, I bet she’d like a place like the ruins. Purple everywhere, nice and quiet, lots of books. Her kinda thing.”

Toriel smiled just as cheerfully. “I have a question, myself, do I know you from anywhere? I can swear, my child, I have seen you before somewhere…”

You’re pretty surprised you seem familiar at all. “Well, yes, actually. We’ve met once. briefly.”

“Oh! Child, why didn’t you say! Heavens, I cannot believe, I do not remember your name or-!”

You cut her panic off, grinning. “Don’t worry, hey, we didn’t get to names- oh, well, you did. Toriel, but, then again everyone kind of knows your name, more or less. But don’t sweat it, that was… 3? 4? Years ago? How long has it been since you guys came up?”

Toriel hits her fist on her palm, as though remembering. “4 and a half years! Oh, my child, you have grown so much! Not even in school, humans grow so quickly- my, I could never forget the first human I ever spoke to on the surface, it was quite amazing!”

You beam. “I can still hardly believe the first monster I ever met was the queen- er, ex-queen herself! Or that I was one of the first people to get to see you guys coming. I can’t imagine the principal had much help to offer when you got there, jeeze.”

Toriel waved her hand, “oh, mind me, I shouldn’t have asked a school child to ‘take me to her leader’ like some wild alien! I had no idea there could be so many humans on the surface. There would never have been enough room in the underground for so many monsters! Last I or any other had seen, humans were still in villages. We knew things had changed, but this is quite amazing.”

“Oh yeah? Well, what was the coolest thing you ended up seeing above ground?”

Toriel’s song is so amazing, it’s beating with her wonder and excitement. You love talking to her. The longer you do, the more you come to love her song.

Somehow she stays for hours, the two of you chattering on. You feel her mood lifting every moment here. You wonder if being somewhere familiar, a place like her old home, is what makes her happier.

After a long time she remembers her book and makes to purchase it, and by the time she leaves… she seems refreshed, at peace. So much more calm.

When she leaves, the store closes, and you spend all night working on your old tracks trying to perfect the sound of Toriel that you’d started in highschool, and the whimsical sounding imprint that she and the other monsters have left on your store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fact: this particular Reader Insert also canonically exists in the SlaveTale universe, as did the Read Insert from Peace.   
> you'll see them in Slavetale eventually, but it's an entirely different timeline then Peace or Musicbox are in. Peace and Musicbox also take place in different timelines.


	6. Partners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> good news in The Ruins

Apparently, the Ruins, aka your bookstore, soon becomes Toriel’s home away from home.

She starts to pop in a lot after her first visit. It makes you happy to hear the way her song effects the atmosphere music of the store, it makes the old, aged place feel… warmer.

She comes minimally at first. Maybe once more the first month, and she comes in looking exhausted. She tells you about how the ambassadorial human-monster relations office is in a skyscraper a little ways away in the heart of the city, and that your little store is like a half way point between it and her apartment, so she stopped in; she’s too exhausted to keep going at that moment, she needs a walking break.

She stays once again for several hours, and by the time she leaves again, she’s got a mildly tired smile on her face, and a little more enthusiasm to continue her day.

The next month she comes around every week. She mentions she tried to stop by in the morning on the way to work, but you were not open. You tell her about your morning job at the high school where you first met her as the IT aid and assistant librarian.

The two of you end up talking a lot about that, as Toriel says she doesn’t use computers at her school yet and likes asking you questions about how humans use them. You convinced her to look into it, and promise to look into researching how the schools actually get the computers so that she can get a few, as well.

Toriel’s school doesn’t even have a PA system. It’s very technologically downsized. You swear you’ve heard something like that in one of the news cases in parent complaints, so you assure Toriel that it may help in the human-monster-inclusion program. Technology is getting very important these days, after all.

Toriel explains to you that her friend planned on assisting her in improving the technology for the school, but her friend- Alphys, you think she called her- has been very busy lately in the Ambassadorial building.

Alphys is the Royal Scientist, otherwise known as the top monster scientist. Toriel makes a long winded remark about how difficult it is for Alphys to get the scientific community of humans to comprehend Magic, let alone some of Alphys’ wild magic-science inventions. Toriel says something about a phone jetpack and you have to admit, you have a hard time accepting that, too.

By the third or fourth month Toriel comes almost daily. She’s a common companion of the library and sometimes humans or monsters come into your shop, looking for Toriel. You feel like the queen’s receptionist sometimes, as you take down notes for her from those coming to seek her.

You’ve started keeping a file in the desk’s mini safe under the money tray, where you keep those notes. Sometimes people come from the ambassadorial building with information if Toriel can’t be reached by phone for whatever reason. You aren’t sure how that’s really legal for them to give you until Toriel shyly says that since so many people come down there looking for her there, she went ahead and gave you and the place clearance.

“That’s- weird.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry, my child. It was selfishly convenient, I hate making staff drive all the way out to my old apartment just for no one to be there…”

“You old softy.”

“Hehe, but, I can certainly tell them to stop coming! Oh, my, let me take care of this tomorrow-”

“Nonsense, Tor. Froggitaboutit.” She giggles at your puns. She does have a love for them you find adorable. “In fact, I’ve been, uh, meaning to do something…”

After shuffling around a little, you produce the object you were looking for. It clanks as you deposit it on the counter.

“OH- my child, is that-”

“well, uh, ya know. You come by so often, like, every day now. And you help me out with like, everything.” She’s helped you learn how to finance the place better, she’s helped you stock, she’s helped you do everything. The little home business is doing surprisingly better than ever considering its run by a foreign-ruler new to the above ground rules and a 23 year old with no experience past high school. She comes here so much and works to help you so much- hell, she already knows the code to the safe under the front desk so she can get notes and papers and things left for her.

She picks up the little object on a key chain, the Key to the front door and a Key to the mini safe where you keep her more important government-related stuff. A tiny guitar pick like keychain piece with her name printed on it, and “The Ruins” in the fancy cursive Toriel  helped you pick out for the new door sign last week.

“Hey, I figure now you don’t have to wait for me to be here to check if anything’s in the folder, at the very least.”

“Oh, my child…” she turns back to look at you and the melody of her music is _beautiful_ at the very least. It’s so full of affection. You can see it in her eyes, too. “I… thank you, so very much.”

“Heh, its uh, no prob, Tor, I know how much you love this place these days, and ya know- OH.” She leans right over the counter and just picks you up in what you can only describe as a big, fluffy, warm bear hug. “Woah, uh, hehehe.”

“Oh, I do apologize, but you have made me oh so very happy!” She beams, giggling, and stops hugging you only to hold you over her head, grinning. “You are such a marvelous friend! Oh, dear, I cannot wait to tell Frisk, I can’t wait to bring them here-!”

You can’t help to blush at that adorable smile, “oh- hehehe, jee, T. S’that mean you accept being my business partner?”

She pauses.

You can feel it coming from the cheer in her song before she launches into a fit of giggles, “OH MY, YES!” you laugh back at her excitement as she finally puts you down again.

“Heavens, child, dearest, oh my- oh, wow- this- this leads me to exactly what i wanted to- oh- my child”

She turns to you now. “I- I wanted to ask you! My dear, would you be interested, perhaps, in… working with me, as well? I mean- oh, for my school, with me? As you are much more knowledge on the technology and works of a school and a library than this little old lady…”

You grin. Working with Tori is certainly the best idea ever.

“You got it, mama bear.”

She gives a cheerful little hop and cannot help just picking you up in another hug, and you’re obliged to give her one back.


	7. Intimidation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alleyway Mishaps

It’s just you and Blooks that evening, when it happens. It’s later then when you normally close up shop and head along home. The sun had long set and the streets would be dark, and you preferred not walking down alleys in the dark. But Blook’s had finally finished his full album, so the two of you were having a great time mashing it up a little and making sure it was completely perfect before he would decide what he wanted to do with it exactly.

Napstablook was certainly a long stone’s throw from ambitious, but honestly, he was such a good maker, you just wanted to see him succeed.

You’re trying to encourage him to look into what he can do with his album, maybe send it to an agent and see if they like it, but your little ‘jam session’ is interrupted by a loud, _very_ loud scream that makes your heat skip several beats in one jump and makes Napstablook’s headphones fall right through him as he drops his corporeal shape.

“Oh, oh no…”

“Ditto.”

“Oh… can we just…”

You look at him. And he scuffs the edge of his person like one would scuff their shoe. “Can’t we just say in here? …that sounds… dangerous.”

“Blooky, babe, you’re like. Literally a ghost. Nothin can touch you.”

“…”

“Ok- how about, you stay here and get ready to call 911 if I need you, and uh, ill check it out. Cool?” you're not looking back and have already snatched your jacket, and at the door. “Alright then good let’s do that.” You didn’t wait for his response.

You can hear him moan unhappily as you open the door but stop paying it any attention as the new sounds of ruckus reach you, partnered with the loud, angry music of humans in a mob, and a panicked monster’s frantic beat.

You already don’t like what that means.

A mob’s a bit of exaggeration. When you see them its only 4 guys, and now that you see them you can easily string apart their separate sounds; the aggression and volume of the music had thrown you off, and you understand you’ve overestimated their numbers. But you remind yourself not to _under_ estimate them. You know angry humans are louder, and more dangerous, than normal.

From the howl of pain that hits the air you have a feeling that the single monster must agree with you.

It’s a feminine, panicked scream the makes you flinch, before forcing yourself to focus through the ear-scratching noises of angry human music strands. Your ears would bleed from it if it was actually your ears that heard the music.

In the dark of the alley beyond your door, you make out the monster, finally. It’s a smaller one that’s managed to wedge its body in a narrow space between the building, and the next one down the alley’s AC unit, and a dumpster. All you can see is some white, and a greenish colored object poking out, flicking around. It might be a tail.

The next shout comes abruptly as one of the humans smashes upon the possible-tail with their foot, making it jerk under the dumpster. The smaller monster tries to curl into the smaller space deeper but can’t go much further, crying out loudly.

You’re not listening to the humans as they catcall dangerously at the hiding creature, or any of they’re threats. It’s a bit of a challenge, but you manage at last to muffle the sound of their music as well as the mingled, hateful, disgusted and disgust _ing_ thoughts that comes with it.

Instead you duck quickly back into your shop and dive under your front desk when your head is clear, and with shaky, quick fingers- They fumble in the process, but eventually manage open another safe- and out pulls the two registered pistols.

A precaution. You do, after all, live and work in the heart of a city, and your shop literally opens into a trademarked Creepy Dark City Alley. You’ve been robbed here twice. Not that, uh, they ever get much. It’s a little book store that no one knows about. And after the first time you’ve never left much money in this place.

It’s quite logical to have gotten these, and right about now, you're quite thankful to have them. Your mother had always been against guns and weapons but your father had always kept a gun locker, favoring _his_ father’s fathers’ father’s old shot guns as antiques and a newer model shot gun, and some other things, once upon a time including these two weapons before you’d gotten them reregistered to your name and taken them down to the shop. He’d taught you to shoot one summer, but it’s been a while so you probably aren’t much of a sniper. But testing yourself here, you unload the cartridges and check they’re full, put them back, undo the safety. You pull back the slide just the way he’d taught you, and the spring feels easier than it did when you were little, just like your bigger hands can hold it easier. You wonder if wearing the safety glasses he told you that you _have_ to wear while practicing applies to this moment, not that you have them.

You practice aiming for only a couple seconds across the shop, watching the familiar aim piece tracing the figure 8 pattern your father told you is the result of your heart beating, and your pulse passing through your hands. You hear the disturbing rise of the strange, panic-inducing beat you always feared as a child rising in your ears. You quell it with the natural sound of the shop. It sounds quicker and more dangerous with the tense atmosphere.

You lower your weapon and take the second one, just in case, with the safety on, in your jacket’s pocket.

No less anxious despite the weapons with you, you push back outside, wondering if Blook has already called 911 or if he’s ready to, or where he is. Tuning out music often leaves you somewhat blind to your surroundings; for all you know he could have been talking to you while you were getting the guns and you just hadn’t listened to him. it leaves you a little situation blind not to listen to the music, but you feel it necessary even when you’re back outside, where the music is so obvious despite trying to shield yourself from it.

You lower your ‘shield’ of metaphorical sound proofing enough to try and focus on each of them, the humans and the monster- who lets out a startling shriek just as you do. it chills your heart. the pack of taunting humans have gotten a hold on her and are slowly, agonizingly pulling her from her safety.

You suck in a single breath and fire just one deafening shot at a trashcan. There’s not even a second between the sound of the gun firing and that of the bullet hitting the can. The two combined noises almost drown out the music, but cant; once again you’re reminded that what you hear… it’s not really sound, it’s something else sitting on top.

The feeling of the music being drowned out was actually the music skipping as the humans transition from anger abruptly to surprise.

The four people whip around, immediately. The two holding her have dropped their hold on the little monster, and her claws scrabble in fright against the pavement as she bolts back deeper into her hiding place.

You’re separating out their sounds again, like splitting 4 different strands of a helix, and you train your weapon on the one who’s music is the sharpest, hardest, the firmest. A leader, perhaps, or maybe just someone in the group who’s most aggressive and most likely to launch at you, or do something irrational.

“leave.” You say shortly, not trusting your voice to stand firm for long, less it tremble or crack. You can’t sound weak.

You don’t know what you’ll do if intimidation doesn’t work. You’ve never shot a person before. You don’t really want to change that fact.

You can’t sound weak, you don’t want anyone to try and call your bluff. You don’t know if it is a bluff.

There’s an unsettling stillness in the alley without the sounds of the out crying monster or the yelling humans. If you weren’t so focused and nervous, you might have made a joke that even the roaches and rats were scared speechless. It leaves you to focus on their noise, as if scanning their thoughts. Two of them have cowed and do want to leave. The one trained under your weapon is horrified, to say the least.

The fourth’s pace, however, jumps quickly, just before he does- something- something you don’t want to know. You don’t hesitate and whip out the second pistol, thumb clicking off the safety with an audible _click_ in the silence of the alley. Whatever he was about to do is stalled as his music silences with a skip of fear for only a moment.

“ _Leave._ ”

The second gun sufficiently scared the fourth man and the quick beat of his angry music skips once more.

“a-alright- alright, now, take it easy…”

“yea- come on- we’re just having a little-”

They shut up when you cock back the first pistol again. “I don’t care. _Leave_.”

“Dude let’s just-”

“Yeah, yeah, lets-”

“Fuck this shit.”

One of the guys just up and bails in the back of the group, turning and taking off at a sprint down the alleyway. The other two only share one look before running after him.

One human is left. Her music thrums, loud, low, and just as angry as when you’d first pulled the fire arm on her.

She stands there and stares at you for an unnerving amount of time. A disturbing amount of disgust wavers in her music like a flag before finally, she turns and jogs away.

You don’t let either of your arms, still out stretched with weapons, relax for a while, even long after they’re gone. You wait until you can’t hear any of their music; until it’s distant and faded into silence.

When you relax, however, you realize silence was the wrong word.

You realize there’s a panicked music playing in the air, like a digital melody put on fast forward, skipping pieces and segments in the tone of a loud machine.

But you know from the feeling of the music itself, that its only the monster.

You cautiously tuck each weapon, safety clicked on once more, into your pockets after double checking that no other music lingers in the area. It’s only her, so, you approach carefully.

“Hey there, sweetheart. You okay in there?”

**Author's Note:**

> this whole story more or less would be an experiment with human soul theories and playing around in the character soundtracks


End file.
